Why Lady Gaga Isn’t Ditching the CD (Video)

When Lady Gaga finishes her next album, Artpop, you won’t have to head to Target — or the iTunes music store — to buy it: You’ll also be able to download it as a standalone app, from the iTunes App Store.

Pretty cool, right? We’ll see — the app was supposed to be out around now, but Gaga has been sidelined by hip surgery. But Troy Carter, Gaga’s manager, stresses that people who don’t want to consume Gaga as an app won’t have to: He’s very happy to sell music the old-fashioned way, as an iTunes download, and even on a physical CD.

Why? Because that’s where the market is, he reminded Kara Swisher at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference. A good reminder: When Justin Timberlake sold close to one million copies of his new album in a week, the bulk of those were CDs, sold via Target and Walmart, Carter said.

“You can’t shock the water in our business. It’s about gradual change,” he said. “You still have to cater to the market that’s out there.”

So when does that change? Soon, but not very soon, Carter predicts. He figures his market goes mostly mobile in three to five years.

AllThingsD by Writer

AllThingsD.com is a Web site devoted to news, analysis and opinion on technology, the Internet and media. But it is different from other sites in this space. It is a fusion of different media styles, different topics, different formats and different sources. Read more »